There is known the technology to produce a foil image employing a transferring foil made of gold, silver, aluminium, or a hologram, by foil transfer on an image supporting substrate. The foil transfer is usually performed by a hot stamping method. This method is composed of the steps of heating a metal mold which makes a transferring image to rise in a convex form; pressing this convex portion to a transferring foil sheet composed of a base film, a releasing layer, a colorant layer and an adhesion layer; melting the adhesion layer of the transferring foil material to adhere on the image supporting substrate; and peeling the base film from the releasing layer after cooling to result in forming an foil image on the image supporting substrate. However, this hot stamping method required time and cost for producing the metal mold, and it was unsuitable for producing various kinds of foil images in small lot production.
The following foil transfer method is disclosed in order to reduce the time and cost of this metal mold production. This method is composed of the steps of preparing a W/O emulsion ink containing a hot melt adhesive agent in an oil phase, or both in an oil phase and an aqueous phase; forming an ink layer on a supporting substrate to be transferred an image with this hot melt W/O emulsion ink; then laminating the produced ink layer with the transferring foil, followed by thermally pressing them (for example, refer to Patent document 1).
However, although the above-described method of laminating the produced ink layer using this hot melt W/O emulsion ink with the transferring foil followed by thermally pressing them has an effect of reducing the time and cost of the hot stamping method in the point of not using a metal mold, it is necessary to produce a screen printing base paper for each copy. As a result, the effect of reducing the time and cost was still insufficient.
Moreover, the following foil image production method is disclosed. This method is composed of the steps of forming a fixed toner image used for supporting a foil image on an image supporting substrate; laminating a transferring foil sheet on the aforesaid toner image; then laminating a flexible sheet having a less thickness than the aforesaid image supporting substrate; heating and pressing them (the flexible sheet, the transferring foil sheet and the image supporting substrate) together by passing through a pair of rollers; and peeling off the flexible sheet and the transferring foil sheet from the image supporting substrate after cooling (for example, refer to Patent document 2).
Moreover, the following ink jet recording apparatus is disclosed to form an image having a foil image on the recording medium. This ink-jet recording apparatus is composed of an on-demand droplet ejecting head which imagewise ejects liquid containing an active energy ray polymerizable compound and a polymerization initiator either on a recording medium or on a foil; an image forming device to form an image made of a pressure sensitive adhesive agent either on the recording medium or on the foil by irradiating the aforesaid ejected liquid with an active energy ray; a foil image forming device to form an foil image on the formed adhesive agent image by transferring one of the recording medium and the foil; and ink-jet head to form an image on the recording medium on which the aforesaid foil image has been formed by ejecting an ink containing a colorant (for example, refer to Patent document 3).
In recent years, there has been increased a demand for a print having both a foil image and an overprinting image. This print is made by performing post-printing (henceforth, it is also called as overprinting) to the image supporting substrate which has been produced the foil image by transferring a foil on the first toner image in order to improve the power of expression.
As a method of overprinting, although there are methods of an electrophotographic method, an offset printing method, an ink-jet printing method, when the variation of and easiness of image supporting substrates to be used are taken into consideration, it is preferable to apply an electrophotographic method.